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Dr John McAleer

Lecturer in History, Convenor, World Ideologies

Related links: Personal homepage

Dr John McAleer is a Lecturer in History at the University of Southampton.

I am a historian of the British Empire. My work focuses on the British encounter and engagement with the wider world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, situating the history of empire in its global and maritime contexts. I am interested in the relationships, interactions and patterns of exchange created by the British Empire, and in assessing the impact of these experiences on both British and colonial societies.

Before joining the Department, I was Curator of Imperial and Maritime History at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. During my time at the museum, I worked on the development and delivery of two gallery projects, focusing on Atlantic and Indian Ocean history respectively. I continue to be interested in the role of material culture and museums in representing the history of empire.

Research

Publications

Teaching

Contact

Research interests

My research is directed towards understanding, assessing and evaluating Britain’s place in the wider world: the manifestation and impact of empire on British society and culture; its effect on ‘peripheral’ communities (and vice versa); its fundamentally entangled nature (geographically, politically, ethnically); and the nature of the relationship between science, material culture, exploration and empire.

My latest monograph, Britain’s Maritime Empire: Southern Africa, the South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, 1763–1820, explores the ways in which British networks and institutions, such as the East India Company, facilitated linkages and connections in the wider Indian Ocean world. This work aims to problematise and re-evaluate notions of ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ by considering the British presence in the southern Atlantic and Indian Oceans, especially the Cape of Good Hope, St Helena and Mauritius.

Building on this work, I am also interested in the contribution of islands to the development of the British Empire. This is a theme that I am actively exploring through an AHRC-funded network, ‘An Empire of Islands: Concepts, Connections and Collections’.

I also have a long-standing interest in the history of museums, collecting and their complex relationships with empire, both historically and today. An edited collection entitled Curating Empire brought together a series of case studies that used the medium of museums and collections to investigate how global connections, networks and experiences affected people in a range of societies. More recently, Exhibiting the Empire, co-edited with John MacKenzie, explored various cultures of display and their impacts on the representation of the British Empire.

I am a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and I sit on the council of the Hakluyt Society.

Articles

McAleer, J. (2016). "A young slip of botany": Botanical networks, the South Atlantic and Britain’s maritime worlds, c. 1790–1810. Journal of Global History, 11(1), 24-43. DOI: 10.1017/S1740022815000339

McAleer, J. (2016). Editorial introduction. Atlantic Studies, 13(1), 1-5. DOI: 10.1080/14788810.2015.1119337

McAleer, J. (2016). Looking East: St Helena, the South Atlantic and Britain’s Indian Ocean world. Atlantic Studies, 13(1), 78-98. DOI: 10.1080/14788810.2015.1101643

McAleer, J. (2015). “This Ultima Thule”: The Cape of Good Hope, Ireland and global networks of empire, 1795–1815. Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 29, 63-84.

McAleer, J. (2014). “The eye of the artist”: Thomas Baines, the Eighth Cape Frontier War, and the representation of warfare. Journal of War and Culture Studies, 7(4), 303-319. DOI: 10.1179/1752627214Z.00000000052

McAleer, J. (2014). Plants, patronage and promotion: Lord Caledon’s connections at the Cape of Good Hope. Bulletin of the National Library of South Africa, 68(1), 53-68.

McAleer, J. (2013). "The key to India": troop movements, southern Africa and Britain’s Indian Ocean world. International History Review, 35(2), 294-316. DOI: 10.1080/07075332.2012.761147

McAleer, J. (2013). ‘Stargazers at the world's end’: telescopes, observatories and ‘views’ of empire in the nineteenth-century British Empire. British Journal for the History of Science, 46(3), 389-413. DOI: 10.1017/S0007087411000616

McAleer, J. (2013). “That infamous commerce in human blood”: reflections on representing slavery and empire in British museums. Museum History Journal, 6(1), 74-89.

McAleer, J., & Longair, S. (2013). Museums, collections and the shifting interpretations of empire. Museum History Journal, 6(1).

McAleer, J. (2009). Eminent service: war, slavery and the politics of public recognition in the British Caribbean and the Cape of Good Hope c. 1782-1807. The Mariner's Mirror, 95(1), 33-51.

McAleer, J. (2008). ‘The slavery question in Eastern Africa’: representations of Indian Ocean slavery and its suppression in nineteenth?century Britain from the collection of the National Maritime Museum. Journal for Maritime Research, 10(1), 23-49. DOI: 10.1080/21533369.2008.9668363

McAleer, J. (2008). The production and publication of Captain Henry Butler's South African Sketches (1841). Studies in Travel Writing, 12(2), 111-136. DOI: 10.3197/136451408X329734

McAleer, J. (2007). Captain Henry Butler in South Africa. Journal of the Butler Society, 4(4), 633-643.

McAleer, J. (2004). The sublime aesthetic and nineteenth-century representations of the Victoria Falls. Postgraduate Journal of Aesthetics, 1(3), 124-135.

Reviews

Mcaleer, J. (2016). Book Review: Rivalry for Trade in Tea and Textiles: The English and Dutch East India Companies (1700–1800). International Journal of Maritime History, 28(3), 626-627. DOI: 10.1177/0843871416645715p

Mcaleer, J. (2016). The Indian and Pacific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks, 1768-1820, vol. VIII, Letters, 1810-1821. Edited by Neil Chambers. London: Pickering & Chatto. 2014. 448 p. £100/$180 (hb). ISBN 978-1-84893-380-4. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 39(3), 464-465. DOI: 10.1111/1754-0208.12321

Books

Mcaleer, J., & Rigby, N. (2017). Captain Cook and the Pacific: Art, Exploration and Empire: Art, Exploration and Empire. Yale University Press.

Mcaleer, J. (2017). Picturing India: People, Places and the World of the East India Company. London: British Library.

Mcaleer, J. (2017). Picturing India: People, Places and the World of the East India Company. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Mcaleer, J. (2016). Britain's Maritime Empire: Southern Africa, the South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, 1763-1820. Cambridge, GB: Cambridge University Press.

Mcaleer, J., & Petley, C. (Eds.) (2016). The Royal Navy and the British Atlantic World, c. 1750–1820. Basingstoke, GB: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI: 10.1057/978.1.137.50765.5

McAleer, J., & MacKenzie, J. M. (Eds.) (2015). Exhibiting the empire: cultures of display and the British Empire. Manchester, GB: Manchester University Press.

Longair, S., & McAleer, J. (Eds.) (2012). Curating empire: museums and the British imperial experience. (Studies in Imperialism). Manchester, GB: Manchester University Press.

Bowen, H., Blyth, R. J., & McAleer, J. (2011). Monsoon traders: the maritime world of the East India Company. London, GB: Scala.

McAleer, J. (2010). Representing Africa: landscape, exploration and empire in Southern Africa, 1780–1870. (Studies in Imperialism). Manchester, GB: Manchester University Press.

Book Chapters

Mcaleer, J. (2016). Atlantic periphery, Asian gateway: the Royal Navy at the Cape of Good Hope, 1785–1815. In J. Mcaleer, & C. Petley (Eds.), The Royal Navy and the British Atlantic World, c. 1750–1820. (pp. 173-195). London, GB: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI: 10.1057/978-1-137-50765-5

Mcaleer, J. (2016). Engravings after Scott and Lambert. In E. Hughes (Ed.), Spreading Canvas: Eighteenth-Century British Marine Painting. (pp. 204-205). New Haven, US: Yale University Press.

Mcaleer, J. (2016). Global connections: punch, porcelain and maritime material culture. In A. Craciun, & S. Schaffer (Eds.), The Material Cultures of Enlightenment Arts and Sciences. (pp. 219-221). Basingstoke, GB: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI: 10.1057/978-1-137-44379-3

Petley, C., & Mcaleer, J. (2016). Introduction: The Royal Navy and the British Atlantic. In J. Mcaleer, & C. Petley (Eds.), The Royal Navy and the British Atlantic World, c. 1750–1820. (pp. 1-25). London, GB: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI: 10.1057/978-1-137-50765-5

Mcaleer, J. (2016). Serres, The Taking of Chandernagore. In E. Hughes (Ed.), Spreading Canvas: Eighteenth-Century British Marine Painting. (pp. 228-229). New Haven, US: Yale University Press.

McAleer, J. (2015). Exhibiting exploration: Captain Cook, voyages of exploration and cultures of display. In J. McAleer, & J. M. Mackenzie (Eds.), Exhibiting the Empire: Cultures of Display and the British Empire. (pp. 42-63). Manchester, GB: Manchester University Press.

McAleer, J., & Huzzey, R. (2015). History, memory, and Britain’s commemoration of Atlantic slave-trade suppression. In R. Burroughs, & R. Huzzey (Eds.), The Suppression of the Atlantic Slave Trade: British Policies, Practices and Representations of Naval Coercion. (pp. 166-188). Manchester, GB: Manchester University Press.

Mcaleer, J., & MacKenzie, J. M. (2015). Introduction: cultures of display and the British Empire. In J. Mcaleer, & J. M. Mackenzie (Eds.), Exhibiting the Empire: Cultures of Display and the British Empire. (pp. 1-17). Manchester, GB: Manchester University Press.

McAleer, J., & Warrior, C. (2015). Objects of exploration: expanding the horizons of maritime history. In F. MacDonald, & C. W. J. Withers (Eds.), Geography, Technology and Instruments of Exploration. (pp. 97-118). (Studies in Historical Geography). Farnham, GB: Ashgate.

McAleer, J. (2014). Displaying its wares: material culture, the East India Company and British encounters with India in the long eighteenth century. In S. Davies, D. S. Roberts, & G. S. Espinosa (Eds.), India and Europe in the Global Eighteenth Century. (pp. 199-221). (SVEC; No. 2014:01). Oxford, GB: Voltaire Foundation.

McAleer, J. (2014). Objects of empire: museums, material culture, and histories of empire. In G. Riello, & A. Gerritson (Eds.), Writing Material Culture History. (pp. 249-255). London, GB: Bloomsbury.

McAleer, J., & Longair, S. (2012). Introduction: Curating empire: Museums and the British imperial experience. In S. Longair, & J. McAleer (Eds.), Curating Empire: Museums and the British Imperial Experience. (pp. 1-16). (Studies in Imperialism). Manchester, GB: Manchester University Press.

McAleer, J. (2012). The case of Thomas Baines, curator-explorer extraordinaire, and the display of Africa in nineteenth-century Norfolk. In S. Longair, & J. McAleer (Eds.), Curating Empire: Museums and the British Imperial Experience. (pp. 17-36). (Studies in Imperialism). Manchester, GB: Manchester University Press.

McAleer, J. (2012). 'The immortal Wolfe'?: monuments, memory, and the Battle of Quebec. In P. Buckner, & J. G. Reid (Eds.), Remembering 1759: the Conquest of Canada in Historical Memory. (pp. 29-57). Toronto, CA: University of Toronto Press.

McAleer, J. (2010). Thomas Baines: a born artist and explorer. In R. Hanbury-Tenison (Ed.), The Great Explorers. (pp. 72-79). London, GB: Thames & Hudson.

McAleer, J. (2008). 'The sharer of my joys and sorrows': Alison Blyth, missionary labours and female perspectives on slavery in nineteenth-century Jamaica. In H. Carey (Ed.), Empires of Religion. (pp. 199-221). (Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series). Basingstoke, GB: Palgrave Macmillan.

I teach undergraduate courses on a range of themes: the history of the British Empire; exploration, science and empire; the history of museums, collections and collecting.

Currently, I offer the following modules:

• HIST3176 and HIST3177: Forging the Raj: The East India Company and Britain’s Asian World

• HIST2090: Britain’s Global Empire, 1750–1870

• HIST2079: Britain goes Global: The Voyages of Captain Cook

• HIST1118: The Seven Years War (1756–63) and Britain's Global Empire

• HIST6082: Public History

Postgraduate supervision

I would welcome enquiries from prospective students interested in pursuing postgraduate research on aspects of Britain’s imperial and maritime history (especially relating to Africa, Asia and the Pacific), the history of European exploration, and the history of museums.

Dr John McAleer
Building 65 Faculty of Humanities University of Southampton Avenue Campus Highfield Southampton SO17 1BF United Kingdom Email: j.mcaleer@soton.ac.uk

Room Number:65/2043

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